This invention relates to interactive television program guides, and more particularly, to television program guides in which users may create profiles of their programming preferences. Profiles contain information about the user's interests (e.g., favored or disfavored programming genres, actors, channels, series, etc.) The profiles are used by the program guide in determining which channels the user may tune to and which programs are to be included in various lists displayed by the guide.
Cable, satellite, and broadcast television systems provide viewers with a large number of television channels. Viewers have traditionally consulted printed television program schedules to determine the programs being broadcast at a particular time. More recently, interactive electronic television program guides have been developed that allow television program information to be displayed on a viewer's television.
Interactive program guides are typically implemented on set-top boxes. Such program guides allow users to view television program listings in different display formats. For example, a user may instruct the program guide to display a grid or table of program listings organized in a channel-ordered or a time-ordered list. Users may also search and sort program listings by genre (e.g., movies, sports, etc.) or by title (i.e, alphabetically). A user may obtain additional information for a program by placing a highlight region on a desired program listing and pressing an “info” button. The user may purchase a pay program from the program guide by placing the highlight region on a program listing and pressing an “OK” button. Some systems allow the user to select a program for recording by placing the highlight region on a program listing and pressing a “record” button.
Because there are so many television channels available, particularly with cable and satellite television systems, television program guides have been developed that allow users to establish lists of favorite channels. When a user is channel surfing, the set top box on which the program guide is implemented can be directed to tune only to channels contained in the favorite channel list. When the user directs the program guide to display current or future programming, the displayed list of programs is restricted to television programs that occur only on the user's preselected favorite channels.
This approach is not very selective. Even though a user may have chosen a channel as a favorite, some of the programming that appears on that channel may not be of interest to the user. Moreover, programs that would be of interest to the user often appear on channels that the user has not chosen as favorites (e.g., because the user does not like most of the programming on those channels).
What is needed is a more sophisticated way in which a user may inform a program guide of the user's preferences, so that the program guide can more accurately filter out disliked programming while retaining more programming of the type the user likes.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a program guide system with which a user may set up a profile based on various preference attributes.